API Spotlight: TaxCloud, Stupeflix and You-Tracker APIs

Of the many APIs we published this week, seven were highlighted on the blog by our team of writers. In this post, we’ll shine a spotlight on those seven, which included the TaxCloud.js API. Put simply, TaxCloud automates sales tax returns for small businesses. Through the use of the API, developers receive the functionality with zero impact on their existing cart system and no new data elements. None of these data elements are ever stored to respect customer privacy. Currently TaxCloud works with 29 states accurately calculating the tax through origin, destination, and class of goods. To learn more about the TaxCloud API visit the TaxCloud site as well as the TaxCloud API blog post.

Stupeflix is a service surrounded around the idea of taking still images, videos, text, and music to create more attractive videos. Recently, Stupeflix added 15 additional video and audio functions. Among the others, the ones that stand out most are beat detection, face recognition, and video stability. Stupeflix actually has 18 combined API functions for audio, video, and music. Through the API developers handle video creation from editing all the way to uploading. However, videos can be made utilizing themes and other automated video functions to quickly upload videos to social media. This option is particularly useful for sharing information quickly with added audio and music depth. To learn more about the Stupeflix API visit the Stupeflix site as well as the Stupeflix API blog post.

Threat Stream is SaaS cyber threat intelligence for enterprise level operations. The Threat Stream API allows programmatic access to the real-time security data stream. This stream is primarily comprised of three different threat detection pathways. The first pathway, honey client and honey pot, collects terabytes of threats in real time. The second pathway is called Sink Hole. It intercepts known DNS malware families and evaluates the sophistication of attackers. The final pathway, open source intelligence, simply collects open source knowledge of cyber threat intelligence. To learn more about the Threat Stream API visit the Threat Stream site as well as the Threat Stream API blog post.

The You-Tracker Image Resizer API allows developers to programmatically resize the width and height of their images. More specifically, it allows developers and users to maintain image quality, aspect ratio, and size without having to manually adjust the images. To use the API developers must include the width, height, and url of the image. It achieves two important functions that many site developers are plagued with, the second being the most important. Using this service quickens the time for large images to load. Users of the site spend less time having to wait for images and more time achieving what they came to the site for. To learn more about the You-Tracker API visit the You-Tracker site as well as the You-Tracker API blog post.

Load Impact, Swedish start-up focusing on performance failure due to traffic surges, has an API allowing developers access to some of the functionality. Load Impact focuses on providing services to reduce performance failure. Developers define user scenarios and specify load parameters that are known for creating performance issues. The data from the scenario is then streamed into a dashboard or preferred proprietary reporting system for analysis. From this analysis developers should be able to see what areas of their site are being stressed during increased periods of traffic. To learn more about the Load Impact API visit the Load Impact site as well as the Load Impact API blog post.

NationBuilder is a community organization site that recently released it’s own NationBuilder Platform. The platform accompanies a whopping seven specific APIs within the larger NationBuilder API. These seven include the People API, Campaign Data API, Donations API, Calendars API, Events API, Blog Posts API, and Webhooks API. The name of each specific API accurately portrays the functionality that each one gives to developers. The platform also supports email, text messaging, and social media. To learn more about each specific API and more about the platform as a whole visit the NationBuilder site as well as the NationBuilder API blog post.

The Algolia API provides developers with a way to instantly search their apps. The real-time, typo-tolerant service works by first allowing developers to push their data to the service. Once pushed, developers can specify user-defined criteria, geo-distance, typos, and proximity to get a ranking of their data. The most interesting functionality is the typo forgiveness. Unlike traditional linguistic algorithms, Algolia considers each word as a prefix and uses what they call an “edit-distance” to deal with typos. In addition, it fully supports the Unicode standard and leverages the character fallback substitution table. To learn more about the Algolia API visit the Algolia site as well as the Algolia API blog post.

About the author:Matthew Scott
Matt is a finance major at the Lundquist College of Business. He currently manages his own portfolio with aspirations of becoming a certified financial planner in the near future. To connect with Matt, please visit his Google+ and LinkedIn profiles.